Recently, I attended a training class in the Philosophy Department of Peking University, where the teacher mentioned Chinese philosophy (of course, many people question whether China has philosophy). The primary issue in Chinese philosophy is "life and destiny." When exploring the temporal and spatial implications of life and destiny, it leads to an understanding of "time" in the context of Chinese philosophy, which differs from Western thought.
The "time" in the West
In Western thought, "time" is often seen as a point, the instant of the present. However, when we try to capture this present moment, it has already become the past.
When we meditate, our thoughts often wander to various places. Studies show that human minds tend to oscillate between the past and the future. This is why during meditation, we strive to focus on our breathing: the brain needs something to focus on, helping us break free from habitual mental wandering and return to the experience of the present moment.
cannot be carried out simultaneously.
China's "time"
In Chinese thought, "time" is not a fleeting moment. Its original meaning refers to the four seasons: birth, growth, harvest, and storage—these four phases. For each subject, there exists such a temporal rhythm.
It is mentioned in "Zhuangzi · Free and Unfettered Excursion":
"The fungi do not know the end or the beginning of the month, and the cicadas do not know spring and autumn; these are short years. To the south of the state of Chu there is a dark spirit that takes five hundred years as spring and five hundred years as autumn; in ancient times there was a great camphor tree that took eight thousand years as spring and eight thousand years as autumn. These are long years."
: Life spans only one day and night, such as the morning fungus (a mushroom that lives from morning to night) and the cicada (summer cicada). They cannot comprehend the time concept of longer-lived creatures. ：Beings whose lifespans far exceed that of humans, such as the Mínglíng (a legendary divine bird), consider five hundred years as one season; and the Dàchūn (a legendary giant tree), considers eight thousand years as one season.
Life forms with short lifespans cannot comprehend those with long lifespans. This cognitive barrier from lower dimensions to higher dimensions is similar to the concept of dimensional differences in the science fiction novel *The Three-Body Problem*.
In *The Three-Body Problem*, the spaceships "Gravity" and "Blue Space" enter a four-dimensional space. The first people to observe the three-dimensional world from a four-dimensional perspective realize that when they were previously in the three-dimensional world, they had never truly seen their own world clearly. If the three-dimensional world is compared to a painting, what they saw before was only the side of the painting; only under the four-dimensional perspective does the painting fully reveal itself.
In four-dimensional space, no object can obscure what is behind it, and the interiors of all enclosed objects are completely visible. This new set of rules brings an immense visual shock. When all obstructions and enclosures disappear and everything is fully exposed, the observer faces a much greater amount of information than in the three-dimensional world, with the influx of massive amounts of information overwhelming the brain's ability to process it. Differences in dimension or time perception between different life forms lead to barriers in understanding.
Life forms with short lifespans, due to their brevity, cannot perceive the vast timescales and life rhythms experienced by beings with longer lifespans. Similarly, entities living in lower dimensions or within limited time scales find it difficult to understand the patterns and phenomena that exist in higher dimensions or on longer time scales.
Subjective vs Objective
One of the central debates in Western practical philosophy is whether time is subjective or objective.
: It holds that time is subjective, and only the present moment exists; the past and future do not exist.
: It asserts that the past, present, and future all exist with equal reality. Time is viewed as a four-dimensional spacetime block, where all points in time objectively exist, and our "now" is merely a slice of it.
The dispute between Newton and Leibniz
: It asserts that time flows uniformly in all circumstances, with time and space unfolding evenly and existing independently of matter. ：It posits that time is not an existence independent of things, but rather a relationship between objects and events. Time is merely used to describe the order or sequence between things. Einstein：In relativity theory, there is a tendency towards Leibniz's view, which holds that time and space are closely related to matter and have relativity.
From the perspective of
: Each living being has a different perception of the rhythm of time. Personal experiences, emotions, and cognition all influence the understanding and experience of time. In China, time is often recorded by the era names or reign years of emperors, such as "the 15th year of Wanli." Compared to the Gregorian calendar, which requires complex calculations to correspond to specific historical events, the use of era names directly links time to specific historical contexts. : Whether or not we are aware of it, time continues to pass, and life continues to age. This is an objective fact that transcends individual subjective feelings. Although everyone generally experiences several decades of time, each person's age is unique and cannot be substituted for another's.